You don’t really squeeze any more in when it’s warm the issue is the other way around, when it’s cold the internal resistance of the battery rises so you loose more energy in the battery when discharging it at high rates. The car takes longer to charge the battery when it’s cold. You use more energy for heating and the air is thicker at lower temperatures so there’s more wind resistance. In winter you tend to use the headlights and wipers a bit more but their consumption it relatively small compared to traction. All of these factors reduce the range a little.

Take a look for Trevor’s Zoe range predictor app on the Android and Apple app stores. You can enter speeds and state of charge and it gives you a predicted range.

I drive about 5 miles to work, slight incline to get to work +22 meters altitude difference although there is a small hill in the way. Most of the distance is on the A40 at 50MPH on the way to work. Typically I use 1.2KWH getting to work with 0.1KWH of regen and 1.0KWH on the way home with 0.1KWH of regen, so 1.1KWH and 0.9KWH respectively. As the prevailing wind is from the west, I’m usually heading into the wind on the way to work and it’s a following wind home + home is usually a bit slower. Heating energy varies. When it’s been around 0 C I’ve been using 0.3KWH per trip, when it’s warmer this rapidly drops so usually 0.1 -0.2KWH on the way home. Most of the energy is used warming the car up so the heating energy used on longer trips is proportionately a lot less. For a couple of hour trip on a 3 degree day I used about 1KHW for heating. I usually have the heating set to 21 degrees and use auto.

On your work trips you will probably only have to charge up a couple of times a week. For best battery life resist charging when you have sufficient range left. The range meter usually gives a reasonable estimate of your range left . Short trip will reduce your predicted range as you use proportionately more energy for heating so you tend to gain range when you go on longer trips.

I collected my car on the 28th November. I purchased through 0% HP offer at the time as I put down a 40% deposit. I chose the payment date for the HP payment and battery lease to be the 26th and the first payment was taken on the 26th January so nearly 2 months after I took delivery of the car.

It’s monthly after the first payment. This should all be in your paperwork.

Separate payment taken for battery, but taken on same day and I think to the same people – RCIFINSERV-OMEGA -with a slightly different reference.

Yes you will wipe out charge at 70mph…

I think the car uses charge per mile fairly consisently up to between 40mph and 50mph, then aerodynamics take over. Drag is proportional to speed squared, so there is 3 times more drag at 70mph than at 40mph.

You won’t get 70miles at 70mph; you most probably would at 55mph.

What you want to keep an eye on when driving is the energy usage in miles per kwH (mpkwh selectable on the right stalk – reset it for a trip and keep an eye on it). If you keep this at 4 you will get 88 miles range. i.e. multiply by 22 (which is the battery capacity in kWh). This is better than looking at the range indicated because this only tells you how you drove BEFORE the most recent charge – it muliplies yesterdays consumption rate in mpkwh by 22 to give today’s estimate. It’s pretty poor really – it doesn’t even take in to account outside temperature today – which it could find from Tomtom..; At this time of year it’s only showing between 60miles and 70 miles range every day for me, but I know if I kept the speed down, I could get over 80miles… I’ve driven mixed roads, with some motorway at around 55mph to 60mph (nice to keep ahead of the lorries) and had 4mpkwh showing, so 88miles range.

Display goes a lovely reddish purple when you do 70mph…

You’d probably get to the zoo and back at 55mph in winter. DOn’t know what the aircon does to consumption!

The car is 5p/mile excess, the battery is 30p/mile.

Will need to change my battery agreement – running at 1000miles a month now, contract is for 9,000pa. Not so worried about the car excess.

Renault brochure now says battery will be replaced if falls below 70% capacity.

Sneaky drop from the original 75%

Yeah; I expect so 🙂 But I wanted to at least drive it so I wouldn’t be left wondering.

Already against the Leaf is:

– Much more expensive (esp. if you want the versions with the touchscreen, like ZOE has)
– Doesn’t look anywhere near as nice
– Mileage estimator is a joke
– Not a fan of the dash (what’s with showing my battery degradation and battery temp all the time? hide the junk until it becomes a problem!)

But, if nothing else, it’ll help pass the time. Driving any EV will beat driving this ICE car. It makes me deal with gears, and a clutch, and all this archaic crap ;O)